Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Saturday

Deborah Ross

Multiple choice

Right, here is a quiz for you. As I have said, again and again, I’m fed up with doing everything around here and, as no one at The Spectator has offered to help in any way at all, I think it’s only fair that you, the readers, do some of the work. Ready? Let’s go, then. So, there is this guy, Max (Russell Crowe), a rapacious London banker who has built an empire of greed trading bonds, and he has this uncle, Uncle Henry (Albert Finney), who dies and leaves him a beautiful estate and vineyard in Provence and so Max goes to Provence, intending to sell the beautiful estate

Robin Holloway

First impressions | 28 October 2006

‘Late Art’ has nowadays become a weary cliché: the notion of a closing vision — summatory, transcendent, prophesying future or making retrospective farewell — is too truistic to go much beyond the obvious facts of any case. Let’s try ‘Early Art’. It implies a quality of freshness, juvenescence, stretching the muscles, rejoicing (often pugnacious) in strength or Schmerz; and more, the bloom of the young animal in its pride: things soon disappearing in the no doubt deeper, more characteristic achievements of maturity, which can’t in themselves be regretted but don’t stifle a sigh for what’s lost. One composer notoriously never surpasses the tender brilliance of his early music: Mendelssohn. With

Michael Tanner

Overwhelmed by Janacek

It is a tribute to various things, primarily to Janacek’s genius, that the new production of Jenufa by ENO is a triumph, an overwhelming experience, despite having some fundamental weaknesses. It is of the essence of the work that it takes place in a tightly knit, highly structured and small community, and that there is a feeling of claustrophobia about it almost from the start, reaching a peak or pit in Act II, one of the most hideously intense in opera. What does the director David Alden do? Puts the action forward by about a century, so that it is set in 1980-ish Slovakia where there was no particular strength

Laura Gascoigne

Followers of fashion

The word ‘flâneur’ — from the French ‘flâner’, to stroll — is enjoying a comeback among a new generation of artists attracted to the idea that art is more about looking than doing. It was Baudelaire who first used it to describe the modern artist with his finger on the urban pulse — a ‘botanist of the sidewalk’ was how he defined him. The sidewalk in question being in Paris and the botanist being French, it’s a fair assumption that the principal objects of his naturalist interest were not the weeds growing up through cracks in the pavement, but the millinery flowers adorning the hats of female passers-by. Baudelaire’s definition

Mary Wakefield

Beyond appearances

‘Hello, anybody here?’ The gate into Antony Gormley’s studio had slid mysteriously open as I approached, but there was no one behind it — just a courtyard, a row of trees and two metal figures. ‘Hello, hello?’ I walked across the yard up to a vast warehouse, and peered in through the double doors. Still no living people — instead, what looked like a group of aliens hovering silently in mid-air: life-size figures made of looped orbits of wire suspended from the ceiling, others, radiating metal spikes, dangling below; a brace of life-casts hanging by the neck but looking, nonetheless, pretty calm. In fact, the whole room was tremendously peaceful.

Susan Moore

Crisis of confidence

What do you find at the world’s great antiques fairs these days? The answer, increasingly, is modern and contemporary art. Few will lament the disappearance of doleful, second-rate period furniture in favour of Art Deco and post-war design, or the introduction of major international art galleries offering the work of 20th-century masters. But as growing numbers of dealers adjust their stock in a bid to attract a new generation of buyers — not always with conviction or success — it seems that the antiques trade is in danger of shooting itself in the foot. It is evident that the trade is suffering a crisis of confidence. Heaven knows, the business

Mark Fisher

Eastern promise

There was a time when Chinese artists walked on eggshells for fear of offending the old men of power in Beijing. Now here, in the China Pavilion that is part of the Liverpool Biennale Fringe (until 26 November), one artist, Weng Peijun (pronounced Weng Fen), is building installations from eggshells. His satirical work ‘The Triumphal Arch’ depicts the controversial building of the Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze River, the largest hydroelectric scheme in the world, five times the size of the Hoover Dam. More than a million people are being forcibly relocated; agriculture, fisheries and wildlife are being destroyed. The installation is made from the most fragile material he

Andrew Lambirth

Fresh and wild

Roger Hilton (1911–75) is one of our greatest abstract painters, an artist associated with the St Ives School (he lived in Cornwall for the last 10 years of his life, and visited regularly for a decade before that) whose work overleaps constraining categories. Abstract yes, but also profoundly figurative — he was one of the finest draughtsmen of the nude in the postwar period and his paintings more often than not make close reference to the human body. He was the most European artist of his generation and was the last major painter not to be influenced by the new wave of Americans whose work was flooding Britain. Hilton is

Martin Gayford

Hug a hoodie and Gilbert & George

I know that just now people are queuing up to propose new policies to the leader of the opposition — wind turbines, green taxes and what not — but even so I have a modest proposal for the David Cameron reform agenda. Now that he has encouraged the hugging of hoodies and smiled on single-sex partnerships, I suggest that he embrace another group traditionally loathed and reviled by some of those who count themselves natural conservatives, with both upper and lower case ‘c’. I mean, of course, contemporary artists. This is an ideal Cameron issue. If he were to seize the high ground of the art world, he would at

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

Common touch

It’s difficult to believe that the golden boy of British art — as David Hockney remained for so many years — now has more than half a century of work behind him, or that he will celebrate his 70th birthday next summer. His technical versatility and immense skilfulness have seen him through many different guises along the short path from faux-naïf to sophisticate, including print-maker, photographer and set-designer, inspired draughtsman and impassioned theorist, but it is as a painter that he will surely be judged, when the verdict of posterity eventually arrives. And as a painter, there is a curious emptiness at the heart of his endeavour. In spite of

Alan Powers

Ignoring fossil fuels

Earlier this year, a book appeared celebrating the first ten years of the Stirling Prize for architecture. Back in 1996, recession was only just ending and the National Lottery just beginning. It was the end of a bleak time for architects, doubly afflicted by the criticisms of the Prince of Wales. One unexpected benefit of the Prince’s attentions, however, was that the public was eager for stories about architecture, and the Stirling Prize managed to change these from bad news to good. A building that wins will always be a hostage, and this year, for the first time, the glitter looks a little tarnished in places. Last Saturday’s Guardian carried

Tiffany Jenkins

Keep out of politics

‘Museums are the new United Nations.’ So says Jack Loman, the director of the Museum of London. He is one of many professionals, and increasingly policymakers, calling on cultural institutions to act as instruments of foreign policy. Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, is enthusiastic about this mission and is currently floating it as a new strategy. A recently appointed programme manager has been working on the viability of the idea for the DCMS, undeterred, it seems, by the hostility towards Labour’s foreign policy and the criticism of its cultural policy enacted to date. Many think government foreign policy can only benefit from this approach. Sir

Michael Tanner

Golden Gilda

Opera North’s home at the Grand Theatre Leeds now boasts a resplendent auditorium, with lacquered walls and raked stalls, so that I have now finally seen the stage; and above all greatly improved acoustics. More remains to be done, as the news release grimly informs us, stressing that Phase II of the plan ‘will have a heavy emphasis on maximising the public access to and enjoyment and interpretation of the theatre’s heritage environment’, and thereby incidentally reminding us how much of the £21 million already spent has found its way into the pockets of consultants. The new era has been launched with a production of the most ebullient and tuneful

Deborah Ross

Over the top

From its very opening scene this film is exquisitely, lavishly gorgeous and on and on it goes, being exquisitely and lavishly gorgeous — oh, the frocks, the shoes, the petit fours, the piled-high candies! — until you start thinking, enough with the exquisitely and lavishly gorgeous already. How much exquisitely and lavishly gorgeous can a movie-goer be expected to take? Let’s see some heads getting chopped off! But on and on it goes — oh, the fountains, the chandeliers, the oak-lined vistas, the sumptuous, gilded rooms …honestly, at certain points you feel as if you’re being beaten to death by a late 18th-century copy of Hello! magazine. And on and

Simon Hoggart

Altered images

At the Cheltenham Festival last week, Professor John Sutherland was on a panel discussing Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea — which on this occasion won the mock-Booker prize for 1966, defeating The Jewel in the Crown, The Comedians and The Magus. Prof. Sutherland made the point that a prequel like WSS can exist because the author may assume in her readers a working knowledge of any book as central to the canon as Jane Eyre. Yet it also casts its modern influence back into the earlier novel. Whereas in Jane Eyre the first Mrs Rochester is fat, ugly and crazed, in WSS she has to be gorgeous and entrancing, for

Ariane Bankes

The witching hour

Twilight, the witching hour — that tantalising moment on the cusp of day and night when everything seems strange, poignant and full of possibilities. It is a gift to the photographer, whose raw material is light: its shifting subtleties, its evanescence, its poetic potential. The V&A has collected in this exhibition the work of eight contemporary photographers from around the world who have made twilight their subject. Like all the best ideas it seems strikingly obvious, yet it has apparently not been done before. Just off the bustle of the V&A’s entrance foyer, the exhibition offers a twilight zone, an area of stillness suffused with dim blue light. Each artist’s

Henrietta Bredin

‘There are no barriers’

There are many who might consider it an absolute crime that someone who would look so entirely delectable in a dirndl is instead about to hit the stage of the London Palladium draped from head to toe in a habit and wimple. Lesley Garrett, however, is so thrilled that she can barely contain herself. Other small girls growing up — as millions of us did — with the film of The Sound of Music spooling like an ever-present backing track to our lives might have felt a particular affinity with the rebellious Maria, the confused teenage Liesl or even the obnoxiously winsome Gretl. Not Lesley. Was she surprised to be

Saturday

Rosamund Pike

Journey of the soul

It is a Monday morning, after a week’s run of Summer and Smoke, and following the example of Tennessee Williams I have just brewed myself a coffee pot of liquid dynamite, and sitting down immediately after breakfast I am hoping its pressure on my heart will stimulate this article. Tennessee Williams was a proud punisher of his heart and, if I wished to follow his example to the letter, I would just now be preparing myself a little intramuscular injection of a secret formula concocted by my doctor. While I would still hate the business of pushing a needle into my skin, the immediate rush of creative energy, combined with

Andrew Lambirth

Masterpieces in miniature

Regular readers of this column will be aware that I champion small exhibitions which combine judicious selection with sufficient breadth to give an adequate representation of the artist under discussion. With Adam Elsheimer (1578–1610) there is no choice: the fullest retrospective must needs be a small exhibition. An artist who worked slowly, suffered from depression and died young, his total output was 34 paintings. Thirty of these have been gathered together at Dulwich, supported by a lavish publication from Paul Holberton Publishing (£35 hardback and £22.50 soft cover), which is the first decent book on Elsheimer in English for some 30 years. But Elsheimer, who painted on the ultra-reflective surface

Mark Glazebrook

Carr’s coup

Dawson Carr is the approachable but authoritative curator of Later Italian and Spanish Painting at the National Gallery. Talking to him you soon sense a total engagement with his work. He was born in Miami and worked at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles for 16 years. Armed with a tape recorder I met him mid-morning in a quiet corner of the Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing restaurant. I knew that he had studied stage design and written a book on Mantegna. He also curated the National Gallery’s recent show of late Caravaggios, an event which attracted a quarter of a million visitors. It is surely a crowning moment in his career